


woe in valhalla.

by ShrimpZilla



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-21 12:42:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4829549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrimpZilla/pseuds/ShrimpZilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nux survives Fury Road, but has a hard time leaving behind everything he knew before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> written for mad max kink meme.

When she sits on the ledge he throws himself down, tumbles with the clumsy sort of agility he has always had, to sit at her feet. His cheek brushes her knee and her hand cradles his skull and as the Sisters converse Nux lets himself become numb to all but Capable. His world has narrowed to her in the time he has spent healing since Fury Road. He cannot comprehend the idea that it is the Sisters, Furiosa that now run things. He cannot begin to think about the way everything will be different when he finally leaves the upper rooms and the gardens, back into the darkness and filth with whatever dregs of the War Boys remain. 

“Are you comfortable with that, Nux?” Capable asks and he nods without thinking, pauses, tilts his head and looks up at them all. Toast seems to understand in the way she has, the Knowing way. She rolls her eyes.

“You’ll talk to the War Boys?”

“They causing trouble?” He asks, body perked and blood suddenly hot. He thinks of what it’s like in the pits down there. Where the War Boys live with so little supervision, less now that the best and strongest all departed to Valhalla and left the sickest and the weakest and Nux behind. He can’t imagine the Sisters in that dark place, his home, because they all nearly glow with life and that darkness sucks that from you, saps your energy and beats you down. If they went there… If they tried to talk to what were left behind… He stands quickly, suddenly, thoughts spilling over into his body and forcing action, now, movement! Capable puts a hand on his arm, cool on the onslaught of fever fight. He looks back at her, breathes.

“No trouble, yet. But they haven’t been cooperating like the Pups,” Furiosa supplies. Nux nods a little, understanding. They told him the Pups had let them in, the Pups had led the home revolt. Nux tries to remember being a Pup, less desperate to die, less hollow and waiting for Joe’s attention, less beaten and trampled and hurt. He can summon the subtle comfort of sleeping in a pile with the others in his kennel, Morosov’s elbow in his eye and Slit’s knees tucked around his own, but there’s little more there than flashes and shivering nostalgia. “We just need someone to talk to them.”

“Someone they trust,” Capable adds with a gentle smile. He wants to say that War Boys don’t trust, not really, no one but their lancers but the words get jumbled under Capable’s shine and the pain that wells up beneath Larry and Barry but that he thinks has more to do with Slit than the lumps. Slit who had looked into his eyes and called him traitor, who had shamed him when he tried to act as lancer for the war rig, who had died because he insisted on being a driver when he wasn’t any good. Slit who no one would understand about because no one really knew, the Sisters certainly not, that they’d been best mates and more. Brothers that shared a destiny and a car, a bunk, their rations, and their pain. Slit had rode against them. Slit who he thinks, hopes, prays, despite the fact that so much they have been told is a lie made by a twisted old man, is in Valhalla riding eternal shiny and chrome 

“Yeah, okay, I’ll talk to them.” Everyone looks relieved and Nux feels proud to have had that effect. He has spent so long resting and healing and wasting away though all seemed certain that the sitting still is actually good for him. Now, finally, he can help even though he’s done a piss poor job of that in the past. But this is his new life, isn’t it? That’s what Capable says. A new life for all of them. Maybe this time he won’t be so mediocre.

 

Walking in the bowels of the Citadel with a fresh coat of paint and his leg holding weight and his arm swinging free and even the tightness of the burns on his back seem like a bad dream. He breathes deep the tepid air, savors the scent of sick sweat and motors and long dried blood. He feels wired from it, like he’s just taken a hit of chrome preparing for Valhalla, like his body is empty and running on sheer adrenaline, like Capable is holding him against her while she sleeps. Just the feel of it all, the stagnant heat and dirtiness and murky lighting, makes him want to hoot and holler and kick up real good like he used to. But it’s also different. Quiet. Like a grave. Like all the Boys are dead, and isn’t that the truth of it? All his brothers and friends and heroes burning out on the Fury Road just like how he hadn’t though he should’ve by all rights. More proof Valhalla doesn’t want him. The Green Place doesn’t want him. But Capable, the Sisters, maybe even Furiosa seem to think he has a place here with them and maybe that is enough for him.

“Well, well, well if ain’t he who traitored the most holy V8.” A War Boy spits when Nux rounds a corner and finds himself face to face with a small group. He recognizes some quickly enough—the War Boys too sick to fight, the ones he’d seen most often with the Organic Mechanic—and two he knows should’ve died out with the rest but had been laid up when Joe brought the war parties out. These two are the problem and he thinks their names are Cruk and Tin. These two holdovers who can inspire the others to fight when all they are good for doing is dying. Nux tenses, knowing he can’t talk sense to them because there is no sense to be talked. War Boys don’t understand that. It’ll be fighting, fists and feet and feral biting, and Nux hopes he is half as healed as the Sisters seem to think he is. 

“The Immortan traitored us. Used us and taught us all the wrong things,” Nux attempts, moving to get a wall against his back. 

“You know the right things then?” Tin says. Were they driver and lancer, Nux wonders? He doesn’t remember. Behind them the others shuffle like a white sheet, like the Sister’s clothes billowing in the wind as the war rig drives into the desert. 

“Guess he’s learned ‘em being pet to the Immortan’s shiny wives,” Cruk adds with a grin that’s filled with broken teeth. 

“You think a half-life like you’s gonna breed them when they couldn’t even produce for Immortan Joe? Ungrateful bitches’ll toss you to the side once they’ve got the juice out’ve you,” Tin hisses, shoulders hunched and teeth bared and Nux sees a flap of old, leathered skin hanging from his chest and so he reaches out and tears it away without thinking. Blood pours hot over his hand and it seems to awaken the thing that had been coiling in him since he was sent on this task. He pulls his pliers from his belt and slaps the heavy end against the bleeding War Boy’s temple, sends an elbow there shortly after and watches gleeful as the body falls. His partner lunges at Nux, broken teeth in his arm, sharp and biting and Nux can taste blood in his own mouth from where he’s biting down to keep from calling out. He jabs a thumb into Cruk’s eye, digs it in tight until he can feel the ridge of bone under his nail. He pulls down and the other Boy lets him loose a mouth filled with blood borrowed from somewhere because Nux doesn’t think his body makes its own. His heart beats like something heaven sent. Everything makes sense. His body knows what to do without having to think. This is instinct. This is natural. This is right. He bashes the pliers against Cruk’s head too and slithers away from any retaliation, grabs his shoulders, and shoves him down over a boot he’s laced between Cruk’s legs. The Boy tumbles, falls onto this twitching partner, goes to get up quick as anything but Nux has always been quick, clumsy sometimes but quick, and he puts his boot down on Cruk’s face hard enough he thinks he hears more teeth breaking. He presses down, keeps him trapped beneath his weight and squats down close. 

“You gonna listen?” He says, low but loud enough that the others circled around them can hear. Cruk spits out a wad of blood thick and glistening. Nux wants to frown but can’t keep the manic grin off his face. He nearly trembles from it, from the feel of it, this familiar rush of good that puts a stop to pain and thoughts and reminds him he is alive a little longer. He grabs the tip of Cruk’s ear with his pliers, twists and begins to pull. Even beneath the war paint can see it go red. “If you aren’t gonna listen then this’s a waste. Better give it to someone who can use it.” 

“Fuck you, traitor bitch fucking breeder wanting smeg,” Cruk babbles as Nux tightens and twists and pulls the ear away from the head. He pushes as hard as he can with his boot because he feels Tin starting to return to his senses and knows he can’t really keep them both like this for long.

“If you ever, EVER call them wives or breeders or ANYTHING they don’t tell you is what they wanna be called then I swear by the V8 I will tear you apart piece by piece and pin you out to die in the heat, slow and alone.” Nux is surprised at the sound of his voice. He forgets what he was like before Capable, he forgets so much because it is all pain and dark and a madness. He thinks they won’t listen though. He thinks he’ll have to do just as he says and wonders what the best way to go about it will be. He’ll have to tie one up good so that they don’t rush him while he’s working on one. His eyes flick up to the circle, he wonders if they’ll help him now or it they’ll kill him when he isn’t looking, doesn’t really know where their loyalties lie because the only thing they were loyal to was a lie that died with half his face torn away. He feels a tapping on his shin, light slaps that bring his attention back down to the small pile of War Boy he’s overpowered. He grins a little less violently now and steps back, pliers in his pocket as Cruk and Tin scramble to their feet, subdued and knowing it because there was a crowd to see it.

“So… what?” Tin says because Cruk’s mouth is starting to swell. “We go to war for them?”

“Nah,” Nux says barely registering the pain of Cruk’s bite on his arm. “We protect, defend, police.” That’s a word he got from Toast and he isn’t sure what it really means but knows he likes it and thinks he’s using it right and at least the other Boys don’t know any better than he does. They look at him low eyed and tense, scared of this change that has been dropped on them. Cruk, with one bleeding bad eye, looks at Tin who looks at Cruk and again Nux feels that stab in his throat that is the desire to look at Slit this way, secret and safe. 

“You’re fucking crazy,” Cruk spits out, blood spilling out his mouth with every hard sound. But he is grinning and offering his hand and Nux takes it and they grunt their approval to each other. And the other Boys are around them names and faces flowing and hard slaps and pinches to connect them all back together because most of these are not Nux’s littermates but they are all he has now. 

 

Up in the Sisters’ rooms Cheedo fusses over him. She manages to get him sitting and still with mention of how upset Capable will be and it robs him of his energy, sends the room spinning. That is the worst thing. Capable upset with him. Angry and hurt and he imagines the time that Slit slammed his hand in the door because of something he doesn’t remember or the older Boys shoving him down and making him stay there, boots and blood and broken bits or Organic and his needles when he didn’t feel like stitching Nux up any good and—

Nux wants to hit himself, hit himself first before anything can start hurting. Get himself used to the pain that is inevitable but Cheedo is looking so worried at his arm and he thinks that she means Capable will be worried not upset not angry not painful because what was he thinking? Capable could never be that. She is everything, the only thing, good and right and chrome right there in his half-life. 

“What happened here?” Furiosa asks, stepping into the room. 

“One of the War Boys bit Nux,” Cheedo provides as she washes the wound. Nux thinks it’s a waste. The Organic never washed anything. He shifts awkwardly as Furiosa eyes him up. He wants to look good, competent, a secret deep part of him wondering if he’ll be Imperator now that Furiosa is a leader. But he knows that’s a silly, stupid thing to think because they don’t have titles like that anymore. That’s stuff of the past. But he still thinks it, heart hammering with his idle hope. 

“Ah, it’s nothing. We were just, you know, getting acquainted.” He sees her nod, so tiny and brief he can’t actually be sure he saw it. But she doesn’t ask more. She knows how things are down there. Grievances settled by proving who deserves to be right, by showing who is strongest. She knows, has been there, and he wonders suddenly and for the first time by the way she looks at him, and he thinks maybe there’s something good in that look, something like she knows he did a proper job of what she asked, if she misses her crew the way he misses Slit. The Ace and Pesh and even maybe Morosov though he died shiny and historic in Nux’s eyes. He is so curious which was what Slit always said would get him killed and not a good death but soft style and he’d never get to Valhalla that way. He doesn’t know how to ask. Doesn’t know how to say he feels an ache in his chest because he keeps wanting to turn and see Slit there glowering at him and trying to make him feel smaller and weaker than he is. Doesn’t know what it is to miss and grieve because he’s never known anything like it. 

“Everything settled?” She asks instead of volunteering the information Nux so desperately wants to hear. He nods vigorously. Cheedo pats his arm where she’s finished binding the wound. 

“Yeah, I told ‘em just like you said to. No more war parties only scouting and patrolling.”

“And they’re fine with that?” Furiosa doesn’t trust the Boys and Nux feels upset at this though it is something even he knows is smart. He feels defensive of them somehow now because they are like he was and haven’t known the gentle caress of Capable’s fingers on their lips and scars and that thought makes him even more upset even though he conjured it himself. He is all wound up, tight and tense and terrible. He wants the road, he wants Capable, he wants his knuckles busted on someone’s face, he wants to be mindless again for a moment but knows that this life is better and so he tries to breathe deep to calm down.

“Yeah. War Boys’ll be happy as long as they get to drive.” Furiosa nods at that and leaves without saying anything more. Cheedo sits herself next to Nux who really does feel calmer now because it is a nice reminder to see that she trusts him even if no one trusts the other Boys yet. Her knee bounces against his leg as she settles. Such a soft thing that doesn’t hurt at all and is just warm and light and he wonders if he can show the Boys this sort of company, this quiet relaxing niceness. 

“Did it really go all right? I mean, one of them bit you…” She asks. Nux waves her concern away.

“We were just messing around. That’s how you do.”

“I’ve never done that,” she says with the same wide eyed look she always give him when he says something she can’t comprehend because she is so young and soft and Fragile. But it isn’t bad to be that way, and he always means to tell her this but things like that don’t come out right from his mouth so he keeps them in and tries to let her know in other ways that it is good she doesn’t understand War Boys and their toxic culture of violence as the only release, the only sharing, the only bond. 

“Eh, it’s a War Boy thing.”

“Like the paint?” She offers because she is trying because Capable has told them to try to talk to him because Capable is so good to think he belongs here with them. “The Pups asked if I wanted paint the other day.” She laughs a light and little thing. Nux smiles.

“Here,” he says and rubs the back of his hand on her knee to spread a little of the chalky paint on her in this moment of good fun. He feels her tense a little and he stills, pulls back remembering that he needs to be careful when touching the Sisters because they remember being touched as the Wives. 

“Thank you, Nux,” she says though there is hardly any white on her knee but he thinks she is saying it so he knows she is all right without saying the words. He understands this, feels closer to her for it. He taps a finger on the bandage.

“Thank you, Cheedo.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains sexual content

Capable finds him at his bunk. He sees her, a flash of color in the dark, drab room, from the corner of his eye. He snaps straight, panicked and angry that anyone here might see her, that the fetid air might touch her and sour her. “Capable!” He says all high and eager and worried and happy and scared and it’s all the emotions in his withered body all wrapped up in one terrible screech of a voice. He looks over his shoulder to where Grunt is sorting through the things the War Boys left behind before going to Valhalla. He wants to growl at the other Boy but doesn’t want Capable to hear because he knows she doesn’t like things like that. Grunt gets the hint without the sound, sees it in the muscles Nux has tensed and the cold light in his eyes. The other, sicker War Boy hefts himself off, averting his eyes as he brushes passed Capable and out in the twisted halls of their home.

“What’re you doing down here?” She asks when she reaches him. She looks around with smart, quick, Capable eyes. “Cheedo said you got hurt.” He laughs it off and it is easier now that Grunt is gone and he is alone with Capable. He feels the violence disappear into all soft feelings and lightness. He wants to hold Capable in his arms and whisper into her hair even though he doesn’t have any words worth whispering. He could just make quiet noises to her and hope they mean as much as they feel in his chest. 

“I figured since I was all patched up I’d be back in my bunk,” he says instead of anything good. He wants to make Capable feel the way she makes him feel but she is perfect and he is wrecked and there is no way he could do what she does to him. Look at her and make her thirst and hunger and pain disappear, touch her and have it be with all the glory of the sun. 

“You don’t have to. You can sleep wherever you want.” She smiles and reaches out to hold his hand. He grips back tight, dumbfounded, reeling with this punch-drunk power that has him feeling lightheaded. He could sleep… next to Capable? No, he thinks, no she hadn’t said that. She said wherever he wanted but everything he had ever wanted has been wrong, wrong, so wrong and bad. She must mean not next to her like he wants, wants so bad it breaks something in him and makes his mind turn uneasy circles on itself, but back on the sick cot. And he hesitates on that. Is it really so bad? He would be close there. A room away instead layers and levels down here in the depths of the Citadel. He could hear her if she calls out, if something happens, if for some reason she wants him for something. It would keep him calm too he knows. Breathing the air she breathes and listening so intently that he could imagine the sound of her pulse. Down here in the dark with the War Boys and the sickness he would fall back on the way it had been. It would be fast and violent and hard and teeth bared and eyes wide and always ready one step away from falling off the edge and never coming back. 

Witness, he thinks dumbly as he blinks himself back to full speed. Capable is looking at him, looking so hard as if she can see every bad thing he has ever thought and done and there is so, so much she is like to drown in it. So he turns his attention to his bunk, hard and cold as it is. “This is where you used to sleep?” She asks after a moment. Her hand is still in his and he breathes into that feeling, focuses on it, makes himself forget for a moment that he is anything other than Capable’s Nux.

“Yeah. Me’n’Slit shared.” He points above the slab of rock to the mesh netting. “Put it up once we got too big to lay comfortable together.” He risks a glance over and sees that she’s smiling. At the image of him and Slit with sleep heavy limbs tangled up in each other? He tries to smile at it too but the thought hurts his chest, makes Larry and Barry bite down hard on his windpipe and strangle out the air from his lungs. He rubs at them as if it might help and nods towards the mesh again. “I was supposed to sleep in there but the night fevers and the coughing fits made it so I kept falling out onto Slit. We scrapped pretty much every night ‘til he finally said we’d just switch places,” he rasps out.

“Do you miss him?” She asks and leans in so that her head is on his shoulder. Nux is shaking, his body burning, brain buzzing. He tries to breathe deep but can’t. Can only manage shallow hiccups that do little for the ache of his chest. “Nux?” He opens his eyes, didn’t realize he had closed them which he figures probably isn’t a good thing, and looks into Capable’s face. She holds his hand still, thankfully, oh how thankful he is, and runs her thumb down his cheek. 

“He was the worst,” he manages to croak and the words make him choke out a harsh, garbled sound that might be a laugh but might be something… softer. “Couldn’t drive worth shit. Couldn’t even fist fight me proper, always challenging me to stuff and always windin’ up right on his ass.” The words are coming easier but hurting more and the twisted logic behind that escapes him. Everything is hot and tingling and it just hurts but nothing has ever hurt with Capable so close to him and he just doesn’t understand. He wants to understand! “Piss poor lancer too,” again that horrible not-laugh noise, “lucky I drove for him. No one wanted to be with Slit.” He grabs the hand that’s rubbing casually against his cheek and traces it across his face in a rough approximation of a jagged smile. He sees her eyes widen slightly but can’t understand that either. Somewhere deep down he wonders how hard he grabbed her hand but the thought fizzles and dies without taking root. He’s thinking of Slit. Even Slit wouldn’t’ve found that hard. “Boy named Mirk said he didn’t like the look Slit had on his face all the time. Cut him wide open. Organic had to staple his mouth shut. Slit not Mirk.” He feels his body go dark, cold, half-life kami-krazy as he thinks back. He grins at Capable, still holding her hand by his face, and it’s the wrong kind of grin to give Capable because it’s mean and hard and made solely for burning out in a glory of blood. Capable takes a step back, bumping into the edge of his bunk. “I broke his fingers one by one, smashed ‘em so good he couldn’t do nothin’ with them ever again.” He leans in, chest heaving because he’s remembering how it felt to find Slit lying face down in a pile of spare parts with no one caring or looking or even stopping what they were doing. How it felt to corner Mirk and strangle him out, kick him in the soft bits to wake him up, snap his fingers back against his hand and listen to him try to scream around the oil rag he had shoved so far down his throat he could see the other War Boy’s throat convulsing crazily around it. “He was my best mate.” He releases her hands and grabs her face, hears her gasp but can’t connect the dots to what it means with her wide eyes and trembling. He shoves his forehead up against hers, grinds them together until she closes her eyes and he does the same, shuddering as air finally starts to make it through Larry and Barry. “He was my best mate,” he mutters again. 

“Nux, stop,” Capable says and her voice is high and wavering. He snaps back, stumbles physically away from her. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers and holds his head in his hands, digging his fingers into the soft skin at the back of his skull. “I don’t know,” he starts and stops, shakes his head to try and get the thoughts in order. “Slit was—“ he chokes off. Everything you’re not, he thinks about saying but doesn’t. “He kept me tough. Wouldn’t let me be soft. Punched me when fevers got bad. Tried to bite Larry and Barry off when they started getting big.” There’s water in his eyes, burning like his lungs and his veins. He blinks it, watches as Capable becomes just a blur of red and white against the dark walls. 

“You don’t have to be tough.” He lets his knees go out, sits on the floor and lets the water leak down his face like the pathetic nothing that he’s always been.

“Then what should I be?” He asks, sniveling and begging because that’s all he knows in this moment. He looks to Capable, needs her brightness, needs what she offers, needs someone to tell him how to be because once again he’s being wrong. She kneels by him just close enough that she can reach a hand out so that her fingertips brush against his tears. 

“Just be Nux. Be with me.”

 

She asks him to sleep in the upper levels with her that night. He knows, or at least he thinks he knows because what has Nux ever actually known, that it is because Capable knows. She knows the way the darkness crawls inside him with every poisoned breath he struggles down. She knows that every barbed wire tense moment beneath the scum slick walls makes his heart shrivel back down to the wasted ember that it was before her kindness soothed him. He is so fresh and new to hope and healing, so innocent to the ways of compassion and care that it would only take a night spent laying on the hard cold slab to make him miss the buzz of the engine and the roar of Slit’s laughter in his ears. To sleep among the War Boys he must be a War Boy and to be a War Boy would be to traitor all that Capable has tried to teach him. 

So he lays besides her unsleeping, barely breathing, trying desperately to sort his mangled thoughts. Her head is on his shoulder, her hand on his heart and he knows that this is what he wants forever. Forever which had always seemed like a nothing word, meaningless to a half-life whose only hope was a quick and shining death. And it’s all so different from what he knows… or knew… or fang it! He doesn’t understand how to think anymore. He wants to hold Capable so close that he suffocates in her. He wants to pick her apart, sift through the pieces to find what makes her so good and special and wonderfully pure. He wants to crawl inside her, curl up next to her heart, die inside her so that she is more Valhalla to him than he has already made her. 

“Nux?” She mumbles sleepily. He is wheezing, whistling as his throat clenches around Larry and Barry and everything toxic that he can’t push out. “Are you all right?” Her concern is like hot sand poured on his open wounds. It’s like Slit twisting and pulling his shoulder back into place until pain nearly overtook him, nearly spilled his guts, nearly passed out. Except this isn’t pain he knows how to deal with. He can’t walk it off with forced bravado or shove Capable to the ground with a foot on her back to show her he isn’t as weak as the pain might make him seem. 

“Lemme,” he croaks, shifting out from under her to kneel between her legs with the smooth movement of someone used to slinking and twisting away. He can’t get the rest of the words out so he just stares at her, eyes dark and wide and not quite pleading but not quite anything else. Capable pushes herself up onto her elbows. His hands press down onto her knees, running up her thighs and then retreating back in terror at crossing a line. His breath still comes jumpy and uneven but he’s used to that, knows that a quick distraction might be just what the Organic Mechanic ordered. Capable turns her head to look at the other sleeping bodies in the room. Nux can see her bite her lip in deliberation and, ultimately, nod. 

He shoves his face between her legs with little ceremony or flair. He presses his mouth to the hot juncture, feels her gasp and jump around him. Her thighs firm around his ears, feet pressing against his hips. He rubs his nose against the damp line of her underwear. With an easy pull he tears them off. He buries his fingers into the giving flesh of her behind, wonders with a briefness that doesn’t leave an impression on him about leaving bruises in the softness of her skin. “I am the man who grabs the sun,” he whispers with his lips flush against her most Capable place. He kisses and sucks. Around him Capable whimpers in the high tight way he knows means something good. “By her hand I’ll be lifted up,” he prays into her, words pulled away into silence by the wonder that is Capable. 

“Nux,” she breathes as she writhes against him. He is drowning in her, in the Acqua Cola that pours from between her legs into his overeager mouth. He closes his eyes to better listen, better lose himself in the sensation. “You’re so good. So good.” He moans at that, a low humming noise that causes Capable to jump against his face. Nux holds her tighter, harder, stronger and thrusts his hips against the blankets. The friction is rough through his pants but he hardly notices that. It feels good. Feels good because he’s good, Capable is calling him good, good good good. Oh the praise, oh glory be!

“I’m not to blame,” he whispers more. He thinks of Slit and teeth and nails, blood and bruises, the word mediocre hissed and thrown about without meaning, the pain feeling that wasn’t really pain but what did they know of words like pleasure? Tears sting his eyes even though he’s got them closed tight. “I’m not to blame,” he croaks again around her.

“Yes, oh, yes. Please. Nux. So good. You feel so good.”

He grabs her fuller, sucks her harder, feels her body go taut and hard until it falls boneless back. She gushes into his mouth and he laps it up grateful, wondering, reverent. He pulls back only when he hears her stated sigh. He fixes himself to lay back beside her. The knuckles of his fingers untwist and feel sore. He thinks about the way her flesh felt so pliant under his touch, thinks about the way it swelled and spilled between his fingers. Capable puts her head on his chest. “What about you?” She asks sleepily. Nux can breathe a little better now. He thinks he’ll get some sleep tonight after all.

“Don’t need it,” he grunts. He came in his pants while he had his mouth on her but doesn’t feel it’d be right to tell her that. Instead he puts his arm across her shoulders and holds her to him. 

He dreams of Valhalla where Slit and Capable are both there and waiting for him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realize I had accidentally posted the beginning of this chapter with the end of the last one. I apologize. As a result this chapter will read as shorter to some because you've already read the start. I'm a dope.

“The Boys an’ I need toppin’ off,” Nux states matter-of-factly to Furiosa. He feels in good spirits, aside from the spinning that starts in his head and works its way all the way down to her guts and makes the world roll and black spots dot his vision and one wrong breath and he’ll wind up on his ass. He needs blood, needs fuel, needs to get something in him cause he’s running on fumes. The patrol runs have been going good and the Boys accept him, respect him, look to him even though he doesn’t really have much guidance to give. It’s a good feeling. Like he matters. Like he’s everything he’s always wanted to be only just a little bit different because they aren’t riding to their deaths anymore just riding. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says loosely. Nux tenses. He feels a shift in the air and it resonates deeply in him. Furiosa anticipates this and he shrinks under the waiting look she gives him. 

“See what you can do? Sling up a bloodbag. I’m willing to go light so that the others can get their fill. Can’t do runs without fuel. Body needs its own guzzoline.” He knows that she knows these things but he’s caught in a rambling state of mind. He’s spinning out, the tires of his mind unable to get traction on the sand of the situation. There’s something wrong he isn’t quite grasping and when he doesn’t quite grasp he yammers on until he does. Slit used to hate that. 

“There aren’t any bloodbags. We don’t do that anymore. People aren’t things,” she says evenly as if explaining to a Pup. Nux runs this tongue along his lips, eyes darting to the dark corners of the garage around them. The Boys are all out of earshot, shining up their rigs and pieces. His eyes slid back, smooth as oil, and stare straight into hers. He can see something below the surface of her steely gaze. He can’t pinpoint it but he’s seen it before. Not fear but… something like it. 

“You said,” he starts and his voice is like gravel caught in the under carriage, “that the Boys’d have blood.” He feels his body growing hot, burning from the inside, evaporating what little he might have to spare. Everything feels tense and tight and edgy. Everything feels like being a real War Boy again, fighting for every breath, every moment, every chance to die in glory. 

“The War Boys aren’t the only sick ones, and there isn’t a lot of good feeling between them and the Wretched. We’ve been trying to find volunteers but it’s hard. You’ll have to wait.”

“Wait?” Nux repeats sharply. He feels himself falling into a fighting stance, sees the way Furiosa’s eyes catch it too. “I’m supposed to tell my Boys that they just gotta wait? That even in this new world they’re still just half-life that don’t matter in the long run? That even though they’re protectin’ and patrolin’ they come last?” Furiosa’s mouth thins to a line. 

“You’ll just have to wait,” she repeats in a tone that says no arguments. Nux freezes, feels violence over taking his brain, he huffs and tries to regain himself. His eyes stay on hers. Slowly he bares his teeth, brings a fisted hand to his mouth, and bites down hard on the knuckles. He and Furiosa watch each other as he draws blood on himself. “Nux—“ She starts. He doesn’t listen. He turns on his heel and stalks off towards his car. He can feel her eyes on his back, feel the eyes of his Boys on him too. It all feels too heavy and too hot. He’s dizzy, nauseas, weak and spotty. 

He’s still just a War Boy and he wonders what’s even the point of trying to be something else. 

 

He drives out into the wasteland. The sun shining off the sand catches in his eyes, becomes white spots that play with the darkness looming. Maybe he’ll die out here in the waste, crash and burn and finally see what awaits him on the other side. Not Valhalla, not the Green Place, he imagines something dumb and gray and still, a torture for the rest of his second life. Just the sort of thing a mediocre, weak traitor like him deserves for a life spent reaching and dropping everything and anything that caught bright in his dull chest. 

He stops when the spots dancing in his eyes gets to be too much on his brain. It hurts, stings, pulses more than usual. He grumbles and gets out of the car, walks around in a circle and pretends to admire what he drives. It’s bigger than his old rig though he misses that still, soft as it makes him. He wants to paint Capable on the side of this one, hasn’t brought it up to her yet, fears the rejection he knows he’s bound to get. He pictures it in his head sometimes. The long sweep of red that’ll curve over the back wheels. The way her body will hug and swell with the shape of the doors. He wants her the way she was when she first saw him in the back of the War Rig, the way she looked when she gave him that chance he hadn’t earned, the way she looked when he threw his half-life into her lap and damned the consequences. She’ll watch him when he drives because he doesn’t have a lancer, doesn’t have a friend, doesn’t have Slit. That’s why he wants it. 

His mouth is sick-sour. His body throbs, sight ebbing and flowing with the stuttering rev of his heart. There’s a ringing in his ears like metal tearing. He leans back against the hood of his car, tries to catch his breath, steady his body. Tries to will himself the energy drive back to the Citadel, crawl into whatever dark space is near enough to Capable, let himself waste away with the look of her in his eyes. Slit’ll stomp him for being such a piss-poor War Boy, but Nux gets to decide how he dies now and he wants to die breathing Capable’s name. He stares out at the Badlands, remembers and tries to forget all the things he’s seen and done in the name of glory out on those sands. 

The sunlight catches on something more tangible than the dots dancing over his eyes. A flash of something real. The glint of oiled metal. A gun being waved just at the crest of the hill? Nux’s body tenses, his sense of himself dying away until his body is no longer able to tell him, warn him, beg him that if he pushes too hard he’s going to wind up wasted. He bounds up the sand silently, hand on his own gun and muscles ready to launch him into glory. 

“To, chto my dolzhny delat' s etim?”

“On ne tak uzh mnogo.” 

“On poluchil rot.” 

“On ne mozhet ponyat' vas tak perestat' byt' polnaya.” 

“Vy ispol'zovali, chtoby byt' veselo.” 

Nux lays stomach flat against the burning sand and listens to the Buzzards clack to each other in their guttering nonsense talk. He crawls into the shadow of their car and watches their feet from the ground. They’re standing with their backs to him and blocking his view of whatever poor fool they’ve got captured. His body feels cold and damp, the pre-fight chill that always worked itself into his bones and soothed the burning of his fevered failure. He takes a breath and sets himself in motion.

He shoots one in the foot from his hiding place behind the car. A wail rises up even as Nux smells the blood that spills across the sand and the burn of the bullet through fabric and skin. The other disappears from his view swift enough that Nux knows he doesn’t have time to make any more proper use of his cover. He rolls out and jumps up and is shocked into stumbling when he sees that the second Buzzard is scrambling in the dirt with Bloodbag. Nux stomps over to the one holding the ruined stump of its foot, rips through its clothes for all the weapons that are hidden in its disgusting folds of clothes. Once he’s made sure that it's weaponless he strikes it twice hard with the wide end of the gun. Then he goes over and sends his foot straight into the temple of the one that Bloodbag subdued. 

Bloodbag stares up at him, breathing hard and eyes wide in that feral, kami-krazy way they share. Nux just grins. Bloodbag doesn’t say anything, which doesn’t bother Nux any, and just gets up. Nux looks between the two Buzzards. The smell of blood practically has his mouth watering and some deep, dark, desperate part of him encourages him to smack Bloodbag up as well. He remembers the feel of that high octane blood in him, wants it again, needs it even. Bloodbag trusts him, had been the one that went back and rescued Nux from the twisted wreck of what should have been his glory death. He wouldn’t expect Nux to smash him straight into the soft back part of his skull, drag him back to the Citadel, and pump his fill of his blood.

“Help me cart ‘em back?” He says instead on a shaky voice that he thinks might betray the betrayal that lurks in his War Boy guts. “I’m just about empty,” he confesses, his smile all teeth and the feel of it makes him think of the crusting marks on his knuckles from his confrontation with Furiosa. He wonders if there’s blood on his teeth. He wonders if Bloodbag will know it’s his own. Bloodbag looks at him with that wary look a man gets when he’s been kami-krazy too long out on the wastes on his own. His flicks his glance between Nux, the Buzzard, Nux, the other Buzzard, Nux again and one final time. 

“Blood bags?” Bloodbag huffs. Inwardly Nux is screaming, a stick shift in his heart sticking between gears and making everything hurt. The shadows loom on the edges of his vision again as whatever last ditch reserve is slowly spilling out. Knock him out, a voice that sounds like the Ace and Morosov and the Organic Mechanic and the Immorten (glory, praise, witness, V8!) all at once so it’s hardly more than a garble hisses in his ears. Knock the mediocre slanger out and suck the sweet stuff from his veins before anyone’s the wiser. Don’t share that high octane stuff with those others. Furiosa won’t even let ya get a drip of it, not off Bloodbag the Road Warrior. Suck it all up and bring the Buzzards back for the rest of ‘em. No one’ll know and you’ll be a hero to the Boys. It’s Slit’s voice grunting against the back of his neck. He almost turns around, stomach slipping and sliding with unspooled emotion, but he stops himself in time that it’s just a twitch of his head that might only be a response to Bloodbag’s question. Slit is dead and gone and ain’t behind him no more, Nux recites to himself as he grits his teeth in the skull smile he can’t let fall. He traitored Slit. Traitored him more than he traitored the Immorten and the whole cult of V8. Traitored him in that deep and tangled way only a driver can a lancer. Traitored him to the bone. 

Bloodbag grunts and it frees Nux from his thought spiral. They gather the unconscious bodies and drag them to Nux’s car. 

 

“Bloodbag,” Nux says when they’re settled and he’s behind the wheel and Bloodbag is double checking the knots on the bodies in the back. He grunts which surprises Nux a little because he knows Bloodbag has a real name, he’s heard it whispered between the Sisters sometimes. It sounds a bit like his, he thinks, if he’s remembering correctly which he might not be because his head’s been all a jumble for a long time now. He likes the sound of Bloodbag though, somehow the heft of it in mouth makes Nux feel a little better and so he’ll throw it out there until he gets a smack to let him know that it’s gone on long enough. “Everyone’s gonna be real happy to see you.” 

Bloodbag grunts or mutters or maybe just shifts loudly in his seat. Nux feels his tension simmering. He spins the car in the direction of the Citadel, the sun now on the back of his neck like a hand, hot and holding on. They drive in silence, aside from Nux’s wheezing of course which hasn’t gotten better but at least is holding steady for the time being, and it feels, almost, good. Until he sees their destination looming, sees the Wretched swarming like maggots over the land, sees the garage lower down the gates and bridges for his car. Then his nerves grind loudly again because he knows he’s going to be in trouble but he knows even more that he’s going to have his blood on way or the other. Furiosa won’t kill his Boys this way. He’ll die before he sees that happen. 

“Witness me,” he mumbles, hands shaking as he stifles the urge to cross his fingers in the holiest of gestures that he hasn’t done since before he changed but that he dreams about doing with the same bubbling stomach as when he dreams about Capable and Slit. 

He’ll die before he sees his War Boys be oil slicks between the tire treads of anyone else ever.

He’ll die.


	4. Chapter 4

The Boys let up a cry when he returns and it turns into wild howling when they see what he’s brought, connecting the dots swift enough to what it means. There’s nearly twenty of them now, what with the ones that had been left behind and the ones that Nux’s culled from the oldest of the Pups. Nearly twenty and nearly enough that when Nux sees them jumping and screaming and pushing and laughing he feels himself settle in his skin. 

“Nux, Nux, Nux, Nux,” a slow chant goes up. Nux shoves the Buzzard he hadn’t shot at the crowd of their boots. They swarm. Bloodbag helps him shoulder the injured one towards the Mechanic’s quarters. Nux sees one of the Boy-Pups slip away from the throng of grabbing hands and hungry slobber. Frag, his mind supplies. The Pup had asked to change his name when Nux and Cheedo agreed he was ready to be a War Boy. Frag, he’d suggested on his own because he’d wanted to honor Cheedo. Cheedo who had been too touched to mention that it was the Immorten that called her Fragile, that the name was a pain she wore as reminder of her strength. So Nux’d called him Frag instead of Frag, changing the end to sound less like fragile and more like grenade. A poor attempt at kindness but the only kind Nux has to give. 

He’s close to blood now he knows as the waves of white break upon the doors of the Mechanic’s place. Scrubbed clean of rust and juices by someone so that the smell of the room doesn’t turn his guts like it used to. A relief because he’s close now to wearing his guts as well, stomach lifted up into his chest and pressing up into his throat with every step he takes. He shoves the Buzzard onto one of the slabs, notes the way its head lolls not quite dead and curses the slowness that’ll result in it awake and fighting as well as Furiosa finding out. 

Bloodbag helps him get the thing’s arm up and open, needle in the tank. “Stupid,” the man mutters even as he hooks Nux in, even as the red flows thick and dark between bodies, even as the Boys crow with shared enthusiasm for this momentous occasion of first blood of the new world order. Nux grins out at them, pupils blown and eyesight glassy with the almost high that hits him. Bloodbag holds his chin hard in his hard, heavy hands so that Nux has to look at him. “Mistake,” he hisses and Nux shrinks a little at the reprimand. “You’ll ruin it for them.”

“I gotta watch out for the Boys,” Nux responds with a metal edge to his words. He finds his strength as the blood coats his empty veins, straightens his shoulders and spine, and shakes his face free of Bloodbag’s bruising grip. “Who else is gonna?” He asks louder, not caring if the Boys hear even though they can’t possibly over the sound of their own eager energy. He wonders why they haven’t strapped the blood bag up and realizes, late and lost and losing some of his hardness, that they’re waiting for him to finish because they look to him as leader, boss, Imperator. He grinds his teeth against a wave of sickness at the realization, good sickness mixed with bad to make it all confused and jumbled and nothing but unintelligible feeling in his nuts and bolts. 

“Nux!” Furiosa’s voice cuts the rabble like something sharp through flesh and bone. The boys drop back, bodies tense and caught between worlds. Furiosa, Imperator, Nux, all overlapping and uncertain in their eyes. Nux swallows down his blood sick bile, his cowardice, his hopes and dreams and everything that isn’t War Boy kami-krazy War Boy drive and die sensibilities. He forces himself to stand, pretends the world doesn’t spin beneath his locked up knees. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees Bloodbag shake his head like he’s giving up on something and melt away into the shadows. “What’s going on?” She asks when she’s upon him. Her eyes are cruel cold like every other Imperator because you don’t get to be Imperator without being hard. Nux knows he’s no real Imperator, no real driver, no real anything anymore but he tries to be hard as well. 

“Fillin’ up,” he tosses back with as much offhandedness as he can muster. It’s enough because he sees the War Boys slide their eyes from him to Furiosa with unhidden excited tension. 

“What did I say about this?” 

“You said no more blood bags only volunteers cause people aren’t things.” She nods in subtle approval, encouragement so delicate that it’s like the water droplets that condense on the walls of the deeper caverns. It soaks into him and leaves him wanting just like licking those drops used to leave him as a Pup. “Buzzards aren’t people,” he finishes with a half-snarled grin. He watches her go steely, feels that look sneak into the soft bits between his bones. He breathes a little harder. “Boys need blood!” 

“This isn’t the way, Nux,” she speaks low. He takes a step closer, tubing between him and the Buzzard going taut. 

“Protectin’ and providin’. That’s what you said. That’s the new way. That’s what I did.” The War Boys are murmuring, muttering, words spreading life fire through grease. Furiosa looks out at them. 

“Nux,” she says his name like a curse and turns her attention back to him. She knows the Boys look to him as much as her, more her really but Nux is still an object of respect. She knows this is bad for the fledgling Citadel, knows the last thing they need is something like this tearing it all apart. Nux knows it too. He’s banking on it. She won’t risk the fight. She’ll have to let them have the blood. She’ll have to let them live. “You idiot,” she whispers and then her metal hand is on his throat, squeezing til he feels like his mates might pop. His eyes bulge. “You short-sighted idiot,” she says louder. Nux chokes but he doesn’t struggle. He brings his hands up but doesn’t try to pull away. He leans his fingers into one another on the diagonal, raises them high and proud. 

Fang her. Fang the new world and the old world and every world that ever was cause none of ‘em ever gave an ounce for the likes of him and his Boys. 

Fang it all because if he dies here at least, at least, at least…

“V8! WITNESS ME! VALHALLA!” His mouth works on some sort of muscle memory all its own. His vision goes black or maybe he shuts his eyes, and he doesn’t even know if his words are more than croaking noises from his strangled throat. He feels a shooting pain as the knuckles of her regular hand crush his lips against his teeth. He tastes blood, blood that he worked so hard to get so he sucks it back and swallows it down desperate. Furiosa tosses him to the floor with a grunt and brings a boot down on his hip when he tries to get up. Some dimly lit up part of his brain wonders if she remembers how he’d tried to pike her in the spine. 

“Furiosa! Stop!” A high voice screeches just as Furiosa gets the toe of her boot caught in the space between his ribs. The next moment someone is helping him to stand while someone else is gently pulling the needle from his arm. He recognizes the feel of Toast’s shoulder under his armpit and Cheedo’s fingers pressing on his skin. Nux opens his eyes, dizzy and dreamy. Capable is in front of him, fire and light like the burning chrome of Valhalla made person. “Just stop!” 

“Nux disobeyed an order. He knows this is what happens.” Nux blinks around at the War Boys watching wide eyed and slack jawed at the Sisters’ defense of him. He sees them holding down the reawakened Buzzards, sees Max come up behind Furiosa and put a hand lightly on her shoulder, sees everything as if he isn’t truly a part of it. 

“That’s the old way,” Cheedo says. 

“Besides, it’s a Buzzard. May as well be good for something.” The Boys laugh at Toast even as Furiosa and Capable both fix her with a warning stare. She shrugs and it shifts him into standing on his own, heaving hard breaths and watching Furiosa with something, something, something like the word mediocre lodged in his chest. 

“We need blood,” he says again, sloppy from his busted lips. Furiosa frowns.

“Maybe this isn’t the way but we can’t… we can’t just let them die while we try to find a better way. Nux,” and Capable glances back at him when she says his name as if reminding him of something. He takes it like he takes everything she gives him and hoards it inside his skull with the slim pickings of good memories he possesses. “Nux was just trying to help.”

“Fine,” Furiosa says after a dangerous pause. “Let them fill up.” A cheer goes up. Imperator, Nux, Furiosa, Sisters, Citadel all said together. Nux hangs onto the sound of his name in the mix. Furiosa throws Bloodbag’s hand off her shoulder where Nux thinks maybe he was more restraining her than offering support. She levels her metal hand with Nux’s V8 over Capable’s shoulder. “No more runs for you. You’re staying put. You have to earn your wheel after what you’ve done.”

Nux bristles. This is worse than death of any kind. His shoulders come up around his ears, but then Capable is reaching back to grab his fingers tight, tight, tight. Remember, the pressure says, remember you’ve got a reason other than driving and glory now. 

“Reasonable,” he consents and the broken air of the place seems to mend itself. 

“Finish up in here,” Furiosa says with a sigh and a glance at the wide, white faces that stare at them with hope and hopelessness scratched and shadowed across them. She shakes her head a little and leaves. The Boys waste no time getting the second Buzzard set up. Nux declines when Toast offers to help him to hook back up. He’s had enough for now, enough to last for a few hours at least. Blood goes to the people who need it to ride and now that isn’t him. He encourages the Sisters to help the Boys, and they do and the look in the Boys’ eyes is the same look he imagines he has when looking at Capable. Glory, right here, in front of them, glory.

He watches and his eyes land on Frag who hovers near the entrance and worries his fingers in his mouth. Nux drags himself over and he’s almost proud at the way Frag holds his ground, shivering almost entirely in check. The Pup-Boy opens his mouth and Nux almost pauses to listen. Almost, so many almosts, always almost now. He shoves his hand out and feels from the force of how it hits the hollow of Frag’s chest that it must push the air out of his shriveled little War Boy lungs. “You’re either a Pup or a Boy,” he growls low enough that he hopes, prays, everything that Capable can’t hear. “Go back to the kennels or learn some loyalty.” He doesn’t go further, doesn’t break the little Boy beneath his boots like he could and should and would’ve if it’d been a few months ago. “Stay out’ve my way.” Frag swallows and nods, frightened and difficult but not stupid. He hesitates as Nux pulls back and sets himself in the direction of the garage, needing to put everything here behind him because he can’t look at the Boys and Capable with the way he’s held at knifepoint by his own mind. 

Nux sees Frag weakly lace his fingers in a trembling, infantile recreation of the V8 and offer it to Nux as what must be some sort of peace offering, some sort of choice, some sort of something that rips at Nux’s V8, the scar and his heart.


End file.
